a Year of Marvellous Ways

Various Artists - The Brain Box: Cerebral Sounds of Brain Records 1972-1979 (2017) {8CD Box Set Universal Music}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 4.07 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 1.39 Gb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 14 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1972-79, 2017 Vertigo / Capitol / Universal Music | 00600753695647
Rock / Krautrock / Psychedelic / Progressive Rock

The Brain Box is the first deluxe collection celebrating the Hamburg based label who paved the way for many Krautrock and German Psych artists. Limited to 3300 units worldwide, and containing 83 tracks on 8 cd's, a 74 page hardcover book, a Brain records tote bag, and all housed in a green linen wrapped box. CD's 1-6 feature artists like Guru Guru, Cluster, Jane, Embryo, Harmonia and more. CD's 7-8 contain music the from Brain Festivals in Essen during 1977 and 1978.

It is not always easy to avoid writing a shade smugly about the arrangements Mozart made of choral works by Handel. Nowadays, increasingly, we try to listen to such works as Acis and Galatea and the Cecilian Ode in the form in which Handel composed them; to hear them through the prism of the classical musical consciousness is disconcerting. For once we feel that we know better than Mozart. Well, so we do, about Handel and the way he makes the best effect (at least on us); but a different kind of historical awareness is needed here, one that puts us into the frame of mind of late eighteenth-century Vienna and its perception of Handel.

The first few months of 1970 were tumultuous for the Grateful Dead. They had been all over the country, from the Fillmore East to Hawaii and back, by way of New Orleans and St. Louis. They had fired their organ player, fired their manager, hired a new road manager and recorded an album. By 8th March, they had already played 34 shows. As near as anyone can tell, the sessions for Workingman's Dead were 16 - 19th February and then 9 - 16th March, when the basic tracks were completed. What has come to be known as the project tour - an east coast jaunt running 17th March through 29th March - was undertaken with the aim of composing a road song while on the aforementioned surface. Lyricist Robert Hunter had joined the tour for this express purpose and Truckin was written while the group allegedly hung around the pool in Dania, FL, just North of Miami, where they would also perform two gigs at the unlikely venue, Pirates World, an amusement park in the city which hosted rock gigs on weekends.

Following two patchier albums filled with cheery East End tales, Argy Bargy (1980), emerged as their crowning achievement. Now reissued along with some of the band's later efforts, it remains a masterpiece of kitchen sink pop, possibly second only to the follow up, East Side Story. Chris Difford, and Glenn Tilbrook, the band's Lennon and McCartney had already proven themselves adept at gritty, witty tableaus like Up The Junction or Slap And Tickle. Added to this was their technical sheen. There's Tilbrook's underrated ability to pull tasty (and apt) solos out of the hat like a younger George Harrison - the solo at 1.46 on Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) is one of the best - and also one of the best drummers in the business in Gilson Lavis. All this briefly made Squeeze world-beaters.

Considered by many to be the finest jazz trombonist of all time, J.J. Johnson somehow transferred the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to his more awkward instrument, playing with such speed and deceptive ease that at one time some listeners assumed he was playing valve (rather than slide) trombone. Johnson toured with the territory bands of Clarence Love and Snookum Russell during 1941-1942, and then spent 1942-1945 with Benny Carter's big band. He made his recording debut with Carter (taking a solo on "Love for Sale" in 1943), and played at the first JATP concert (1944)…

The cube made with matches which appears on the cover of this disc, showing on flames in the inside of the digipak and afterwards completely burnt, plays with the ideas that inspire this dazzling recording: the four ways to the knowledge of numbers through the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy), which are expressed through something as ephemeral assound, where also the unexpected and the emotion of the moment take place.